TechTuesday - Chaplain Conversion

Hello everybody Ian with Kreator Hobbies with another installment of Tech Tuesday.  This week I wanted to highlight my Space Marines Chaplain. Recently I decided to create a Space Marine chapter to support my Space Wolves and be a third Warhammer 40000 army.  I'm going to be using my own color scheme which we will show you guys on a later date. The other thing I decided on was that I wanted to convert a Chaplain instead of purchasing one.

So I set out to find some bits.  I had an old Since Marine Veteran model with a power axe laying about so I figured that would work well. Next I went looking for the crozius, I found a crozius bit and built it up with the bottom portion of a Dark Angels power maul. I also found a bionic arm and fusion pack from the Space Marine Commander box set. Now I needed the iconic skull helmet. I eventually took one of the skull heads off the chaos marine champion box.  I cut off all the dirty chaos parts off and you can barely tell where it's from. Then I got my bolt pistol from the Black Templars update sprue and a shoulder pad from an Grey Hunters box.  Once I found all the bits I needed I pinned everything together and placed the model in a vat of warm water and simple green to strip the old paint job. Then after roughly 24 hours I brushed the old paint job away. You to this point this were going quite smoothly. .. Then do to breakage I wound up having to cut the old biopic arm down and add my own flair to it so that I could use the Templar bit.  Then I sculpted the goregut to the model. As this is one of only a few pieces off armour I have sculpted this was a bit laborious but I think the end result was worth all the effort. I did as well need to fix the skull a bit from file/Dremmel marks that were left in it as well. Once all this was complete I filled in my gaps so there are no seams on this model and left him looking like this.  Thank you all for reading this week this is Ian with Kreator Hobbies saying Inspirata Ex Igne.

TechTuesday - Paint Schemes

Hello Ian with Creator hobbies again for another week of technical Tuesday. First off I apologise for the delay yesterday was a little rough thought I going to have had a baby last night. This week I wanted to talk a little bit about paint schemes, and how to make everything tie into your chosen force. If you pay attention to a few key things you two have a well organized, good looking, cohesive, and attractive model sets to show off on the table.
If you're working on a particular chapter or army yeah you have less flexibility when it comes to the colors your painting. However generally speaking unless you're going to copy every single little detail, your going to get to choose the colors that you will paint your grenade, pouches, pistols, and stuff like that. If you all the sudden decided to paint your grenades and yours pistol pink when he's already blue and yellow it's going to look funny no way around it. So here's some quick tips when considering how to get your paint to suit your force. 

1 get it least some what familiar with the color wheel, particularly the complementary colors and knowing of course what other colors mix to make those colors. Primary colors are combinations of colors such is red and green that complement or match with each other. purple and yellow and orange and blue are the other two.  Each of these groupings will match 
up nicely and the color of the paint can be offset with darker at lighter hues. Now this is only a basic look at how primary colors work. There is a near endless amount of knowledge regarding the subject different findings and pros and cons for using the color wheel and complementary colors.  For more info on the subject I would suggest checking out Wikipedia and any of the how to paint miniatures guides.  Most of the books will teach you not only about the complementary colors but how to use the knowledge on your miniatures. Now that we have briefly covered complementary colors we should discuss how to paint them to the miniature. 

Once you have decided on the particular color combinations. You need to put them on the model. Most tournaments require you to have at least three colors in your models and most painters at a competitive level will tell you that having three different "main" colors on the model will help to tie the model together. Generally speaking is your flesh tones mixed in with another couple colors, but in the case of my Space Wolves I've gone with brass red and grey.
As you can see with its red shoulder pads and bolter housing and brass bolter asembily and chest plates, as well as the grey amour break up the model into sectoins that all draw the eyes to it but as well define what is what. Your eyes as well will be directed to each of these "breakup sections" allowing them to better pick up details and fully admire your paint job.

well everybody again sorry for the delay and hope that you found a somewhat helpful if you have any further questions on the subject feel free to email us at viewers@kreatorhobbies.com  please attention all questions with Tech Tuesday in the subject box. thank you again for your time and as always Inspirata Ex Ingne.

BatRep - Malifaux Beta Play Test

Hello every body Ian with Kreator Hobbies.  So I just got through playing some of my first few games of the Malifaux 2.0 Beta with a friend of mine. For those of you that are new to it Malifaux is a warband style tabletop war game and it is quite a lot of fun if I say so myself. The game is a departure from other miniature games that I'm familiar with like Warhammer or Warmachine which in my opinion is rather endearing. The back story to the game is well written and has a creepy steam punk/western feel to it which is a big plus to me as well.

Baby Kade and Death Marshals

When is comes to this game you will still form familiar aspects to other games. You still have miniatures that you play with and once the new edition truly comes out I can only assume that you will have stat cards again as well. You still make all your movement in inches and need a tape measure to play, but no dice. That's right NO DICE all of Malifaux's interactions are made by flipping cards in a 54 card deck, that is a standard set of playing cards with a red and a black joker which we will touch on exactly how that works later in later posts. The other very nice aspect of the game is its size. Since Malifaux is a war band style game you don't need to paint and assemble as many models before your ready to game. This has a two fold effect if you like to paint and convert you wont get sucked into a massive project like going through and cutting off all the heads or arms in all your units to swap with something else before you can even begin to paint, and you can go buck wild with both the conversions and the paint job if you want! The other effect is that due to its small game size this becomes a game that doesn't require you spend a whole lot of money to get your force to a proper playable size. Over all I have spent less than $100.00 and I have a core fighting group, some additions to that base force, glass markers, and specialized playing cards. I am holding off on getting the rule book for one reason and one reason only, at the moment Wyrd Miniatures gave me a copy of there Version 2.0 Beta and I am planning to wait until they release the book this fall. In the mean time because this game has stolen my heart I have printed out and am feverishly trying to wrap my brain around what this new edition is going to look like as well as identify any issues that can be brought to Wyrd's attention. Now I did not do anything special to earn the right to beta test the new edition I simply went to Wyrd Miniatures forum page and found the 2.0 beta post @ www.wyrd-games.net and the file is there for any one to download as well as submit rule changes or issues. This is something that I find rather awesome as well that anyone that has a stake in the new edition from the player at home to the game designer. All if the have the ability to submit their ideas as to what will make the new edition awesome.

okay so now the fun part my friend got some Neverborn and I've got the Guild.

Each of our forces in these games involved Lady Justice, a Judge, three Death Marshals, and and Executioner for myself. My buddy John he had Pandora, baby Kade, Kandi three sorrows, and a Teddy.

The two crews involved the Guild and Neverborn.

With these configurations John's force was larger not only in model count but also in soul stone cost. in the new edition soul stones do a lot of the same things that they used to me you but buy additional card flips and can be used for other things as well. There main role is in hiring your crews. Before the game each player decides on a crew cost.  In our case we settled on 45 and use that to hire a crews with. Since my force was lower in cost to John I got the use my extra soul stones later in the game. We played a lot over the weekend and lots of blood split.  John figured out an effective way to run his force utilizing all of its facets very well Teddy worked to hold off my advance while Pandora and Kandi forced my Death Marshals hands to harm themselves.

Pandora versus Lady Justice.

 

Two Sorrows Versus the Judge.

Thankfully as I begin to learn to play my force. Lady Justice came forward to deal with the Teddy with the Executioner and the Death Marshals all surrounding supporting everything that was nearby supported by the Judge. After all is said and done neither one of us can really say that we are the true winner amongst us.  However as we keep extending the series and as soon as we play on a table with some more Malifaux scenery or build a more appropriate scenery ourselves there will definitely be a few battle reports on our page.

so if you're looking for a game that doesn't require a whole lot of an initial investment to get started in and is challenging and fun to play Malifaux is definitely worth checking out. For Kreator Hobbies this is Ian and as always Ibspirata Ex Ignes.

Executioner versus Teddy.

Death Marshal and Sorrow

Whats Up? - With Weekly Warrior Ian

You guys back here again for another week of updates from me Ian on what's been going on with Kreator hobbies and me personally. I finally gotten three crew boxes of Malifaux started and enough 40k scenery to fill a 8 foot by 4 foot table. Right now in the base coat stage plus we've been test playing scenarios for a new campaign and writing the story for it.  Keep am eye out for those stories in days/weeks to come. The other thing I've been doing is playing a fair bit of Malifaux. The new 2.0 beta edition rules are out and I'm very interested in this game. Its unique and pretty easy to play with the new rules in the beta. You just have to get used to the no dice thing. With this we have the ability to apply to be henchmen with Wyrd Miniatures something we would like to do to help this awesome game out. We just got to see whether or not they will accept us. If they do accept us look forward to seeing more Malifaux content from us as we would have to maintain our commitment to Malifaux's Henchman program. As you can see a lot's been going on and I'm still expecting a baby here any day now but we're still managing to make sure to get things done for the hobby. Thanks again for tuning in, this is Ian saying Inspirata Ex Igne.

Pandora Crew Box Set plus a Teddy

Nicodem Box Set

Lady Justice Box Set plus a Executioner

Tech Tuesday - Sculpting Project Dark Apostle

So a few days ago friend asked me for help one of his pieces. One of the Dark Apostle models from games Workshop and as for some of the new stuff from GW Finecast is still a little foreign to me, so this was a fun challenge.

The first thing that we wanted to do was a hand swap. My friend wanted to put a book in his left hand opposed to his secondary weapon. So we found an old Dark Angels bit and filed the Imperial markings off and then began to work a chaos star on the outside of the book. We as well took a standard left hand off of a chaos marine arm at the base of the gauntlet. Then we took a small chaos icon and cut all of the arms of it and repositioned them across the book as per the pictures below. This allowed us to fill up more of the book make it work for the theme of the character but it did leave us with some gaps and fill in work. I took green stuff and began to cut off into small pieces maybe a quarter of an inch thick. Then I pushed them into the gaps and meeting areas. Where there was plastic hanging over or green stuff that wasn't supposed to be there I filed down. We also used liquid green stuff to make the power armour glove look more like the one in his other hand.

From there it was time for the right hand. Which my friend decided to take the crozius looking weapon then just make it look more extreme. We took the top half of a chaos star from a old Warhammer Fantasy Knights of Chaos box and put it behind the rear skull. We used a dremel to bore out all the little cross arms on the inside of the star.  Then we sculpted a spike to complete the chaos star and also tie in the whole piece, and a small control arm in the back for good measure. The last thing that we did was attach a spike the top of the halo on his fusion pack. This is what the model looks like this without the pack and where he sits before fine tuning and paint. Check back in later to see how my friend has painted it. Inspirata Ex Igne Kreator Hobbies.

What's Up? - With Weekly Warrior Ian

Hello and welcome to the weekly wrap-up for Kreator Hobbies. Each week you would like to take a little bit of time to talk about what we're doing with our current projects and as well in her own hobby life. This way we can keep you abreast of important things such as the narrative event we will be sponsoring/hosting later this year for Feast of Blades. As well we would like to show you guys what we are working on, projects we are involved in, and what kinds of things get our creative juices flowing. This was my week. WHEW! This has been a full tilt kind of week, we are getting the materials together for our massive narrative event at Feast of Blades, test playing scenarios for a new campaign, painting Resurectionists, Neverborn, Space Wolves, and consulting/sculpting for a friend. All of this while expecting a newborn at any moment! Its been a great week none the less though, I have been in contact with the Feast of Blades staff for the last few days going over and explaining to them what our Blackstone Fortress for the Reclaiming the Stone three day narrative event, check it out at Feast of Blades' website http://feastofblades.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=110&Itemid=121

this will be a lot of fun and I promise it will be something for the history books!

This is a rough draft of the ENTIRE Blackstone once its fully assembled. It's over 80 square feet of playable surface!!!

This is the concept sketch of the Pyramid section of the Blackstone. Notice the Ork Kill Kruzer... I wonder how that got there.

This is a side view if what we will be playing on come October 11th.

With that coming together quite nicely I began to work on the nine week campaign we will be running beginning July 8th, 2013 as a lead up to Feast of Blades. The story is coming together quickly between me and a good buddy of mine, and the scenarios that we have test played are working well. We have been through three of the Nine weeks at this point and have come up with some really fun story based scenarios. With this campaign the forces of ruin are pulling for a Blackstone Fortress from deep inside the Warp and plan to aim it at an imperial world. Where will it make contact that is for the dark gods to know! Over the course of a couple weeks myself two very good in very critical friends have played through the scenario. If them there is a flanking maneuver, the other a ambush, and the last a fortress defense. All have worked out well we have made productive changes to every scenario and are now running quite smooth. For there most everything else I've been working on this week is painting. I've been working on a lot of Malifaux models and intend to become a henchman here within the next couple of months. I picked up a Guild starter set my business partner picked up a Resurrectionist crew box and my buddy has picked up a Neverborn crew box. As of today both the Guild and the Neverborn crew boxes are complete and a Teddy. 

Pandora Crew Box plus one Teddy.

Lady Justice Crew Box.

 This only leaves two models left in the Resurrectionist's crew and all of its painted! Keep your eyes open for more from us in more weekly updates. Inspirata Ex Igne. Ian Kreator Hobbies

Ork Tank Bustas.

What's Up? - With Weekly Warrior CJ

Hey guys and gals!  As you saw yesterday Weekend Warrior Ian published his first editorial for his What's Up? column.  Today I'm going to do the same and share what I've been up to. 

So on the business side of things you may have seen our post on YouTube or here this Monday that we are rolling out regular columns, podcasts, & original series over the coming weeks. I have been busy finalizing our equipment needed & planning out how we will phase everything in both at the warehouse as well as back at the studio. I've discovered that some things like the original series will take a up to another month or so, but our podcasting equipment is on order so expect to see those & our columns regularly going forward. 

This also means that we've been finalizing the setup of for both the HQ studio & the workshop studio. There's been a lot of arranging furniture, acquiring background displays, lighting etc.  In fact Ian posted on TechTuesday how to make a soft box for all of you looking to make more professional looking photos more affordably so make sure you check that out.  As we are still in the development process for these programs we can't express enough how we would love to continue receiving your thoughts on what columns you'd like to see in addition to those already announced. 

Other than that I had a wonderful night with my local Spacey Gamers group (http://boardgamegeek.com/guild/1057 & http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/spaceygamers/)

 at Enchanted Grounds in Highlands Ranch, Colorado.  We played Galaxy Trucker then Mice & Mystics, tried Noblemen and wrapped with 7 Wonders.  Pretty slick night if you ask me. 

Well that's this week in a nutshell.  What have all of you been up to?  Please tell us in the comments below!

Inspirate Ex Igne

-CJ

TechTuesday - Building A Soft Box

Hello everybody, this is Weekend Warrior Ian and today we are going to start off a new segment where we will cover ways to make your models and armies stand out from the crowd.  Each week we will cover new, exciting, fun, affordable and easy ways to make your miniatures stand out above the rest.  We will go over advanced painting techniques, sculpting tips, how to properly photograph miniatures as well as answer any questions that you may have about modeling and painting.

This week I'm starting out with something that is quite simple and is a great way to create an even toned backdrop to take photographs of your models in before sharing them.  This is called a Soft Box, also known as a Light Box, or Diffusion Box.  By making one of these you will establish an atmosphere in which you can funnel almost any form of light to a surface which enhances all of the details of the object placed within it. This creates an optimal photography environment for your models.  Unfortunately a common thing for people to do after putting hours into their models is to place their masterpiece on a table then snap away.  While this does work if you're just wanting to slap something online, you're not going to get to show off a lot of the detailed work as effectively as if you had even lighting around the model.  Thus, to achieve the proper look photographers use the soft box, so lets get to going over how to assemble one today!

Before we begin, lets go over how the soft box works.  Essentially it is an enclosure, consisting of a light source that is directed onto the back or side walls which are lined with a diffusing material.  This material breaks up and disburses even lighting around the area you wish to set up your models in and will help bring out all that intricate work you put into them.  A well known source for disbursing light is the umbrella light you may remember from your school picture days.  This piece of photo equipment has the light from the bulb (generally built into the umbrella assembly) bounce off the reflective material inside the umbrella to create a soft indirect light.  You can also direct secondary lights or even your camera's flash into a soft box with incredible effectiveness.  The model's detail wont be dulled down due to uneven lighting or "beach" out due to too much light.  If you want to you can also purchase a kit for around $40 USD or so from a variety of places which generally consist of just the box or a set which includes lights or other accessories.  Now if we just finished this blog by telling all of you that's exactly what I did it wouldn't be too much fun at all or really informative so how about we get started?!

The first step is to simply find a decent size box.  This can be made of pretty much any material depending on what your needs are or what you have available.  If you want to be able to fold it up and tuck it away somewhere we would suggest staying away from cardboard or paper as you don't want to wind up with big creases inside of your box.  For me personally I'm expecting a new born here over the next couple of weeks and a diaper box seemed to fit the ticket just fine.  Then you're going to need some sort of material that you can use to diffuse or soften the light.  This can be done with a variety of different materials, from flat spray paint (a gloss spray paint will create too much shine inside of your box) to a fabric such as felt or cloth. 

Step One: Gather your materials.

a.) a box (any size, a shoe box is generally the best size)

b.) felt (dark/neutral colors work best for lighting purposes)

c.) scissors

d.) pen/marker

e.) glue

Box, felt, scissors, glue and marker

Step Two:  Cut your material to size.  If you are using a box like us then you can simply cut the top flaps off or you can cut the side walls down if desired.  Be conscious with this because if the box is too deep it will not disburse the light as effectively.  Consequently if it is too shallow you won't be able to show much off with it.  Once your box is assembled and at the desired depth you are ready for step three.

After tracing the box edges onto the felt with the marker proceed to cut out the pattern

Step Three:  Add the light diffusing material.  By adding a solid, generally neutral color to the inside of your soft box you will get rid of anything too glossy in the box.  Anything glossy in the photo taking area will magnify light and throw off your desired effect.  You can do this with something as simple as priming the inside of the box.  For this soft box we are using felt.  My wife and I cut the felt in the necessary places so that there are no folds or wrinkles inside the photo area.  If you wish you can have folds etc, however they can detract eyes away from your masterpiece.  Then we glued it all into place.

After you have cut the pattern out, spread glue onto the inside of the box edge

Place the cut felt pattern onto the newly glued area (tuck in edges if necessary)

Once you have let the glue dry that is it!  A soft box ready to give your models that professional "I paid someone to take these pictures" kinds of look, and without having to do just that either.  Well I hope this has been some value to you all and please feel free to submit your soft box pictures and the models you want to show off in them to us at viewers@kreatorhobbies.com so we can share them with others in the community.  Please title all mail with TechTuesday in the subject line.  You can also send us comments or suggestions or ask questions which we'll be happy to answer in future blogs and vlogs.  Thanks again for stopping by from all of us here at Kreator Hobbies and as always,

 Inspirata Ex Igne!

-Ian

End result...felt lined soft box. Ready for pictures of your masterpieces

Picture taken with soft box

Picture taken without soft box

Taken in soft box

Announcing Kreator Hobbies Media!!!

http://youtu.be/YhkVkrZ1XPQ

Hey there everyone!  Weekend Warrior CJ here with some BIG announcements!

First of all, our website is up & running. Rather than wait until all of the features we're implementing were ready, we decided to take the leap & relaunch the website immediately then upload those features in stages as they are completed. The first stage is all of our social media interactions. In addition to our homepage being a central hub for you to connect with us on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, & Yelp, we are also proud to announce a regular schedule for our podcasts, YouTube series, & Blogger articles!

As you may know the Weekend Warrior is our biweekly podcast introducing people to tabletop hobbies. You can not only download each episode through iTunes, but now also stream it straight from our website or download an app to your Android or iDevices which will prompt you immediately when each new episode becomes available. 

We will also now be uploading at least a single video every day during the week. To start I will be airing Miniatures Monday, a series dedicated to teaching beginners how to prep, assemble, & paint their models as quickly as possible. If you're looking for something a little more advance, Weekend Warrior Ian will be uploading a series on advanced techniques every Tuesday. He is an accomplished hobbyist, winning many painting competition awards over the years, so his series will be aimed to help those of you looking for stunning centerpieces for your armies or wanting to enter miniatures of your own into painting competitions. Expect to see techniques such as conversations, sculpting, and advanced painting techniques covered throughout the series. Wednesdays we both will be doing Weekly Warriors. This series will be your chance to really connect with us & see what we've been up to.  From personal projects to personal lives, industry news to mail call of your questions, this will be your chance to get to know us better & hopefully we'll get to know some of you!  If you're interested in making your own terrain or tackling more advanced terrain projects using kit-bashing techniques with the many products available out there, Thursday's will be your day with Terrain Tutorials. Finally, Fridays will be another series brought to you hosted by myself, Friday Knights. As we as a company focus on many tabletop games & hobby genres, this will be the first series to focus on Magic: the Gathering. Look forward to turn by turn DuelReps, happenings in the various game formats, as well as deck-building tips or Q&A on how to handle specific situations you may be dealing with.

Lets not forget that we also will be posting more here on Blogger. For the most part, each series mentioned above will be getting a companion article the same day as the YouTube video is uploaded. We'll dive more in depth than the videos & include anything relevant that we may have left out due to time constraints. However we will still upload regular updates just like we have for events or announcements in the past. 

So that's the latest everyone. If you have any comments or suggestions of things you'd like to see us do or do better, or if you'd like to get a head start on getting your questions in for any of the shows in the series, please drop us an email at Viewers@KreatorHobbies.com

Cheers!

Weekend Warrior CJ